


Good Like That

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Class Issues, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Character Death, Neighbors, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:54:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29684280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: Johnny always thought Sid dropping dead would be a godsend.Instead, it leaves him and his mom house poor and rubbing elbows with the kind of people he used to mock. One smart-aleck, girlfriend-stealing, Italian punk of a person, in particular.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 157
Kudos: 250





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Yeah. Moms are good like that." – Cobra Kai, 1.09
> 
> This incoming trainwreck was brought to you by me doing a weird amount of reading about [prenups.](https://www.ohioprobatelawyer.com/inheritance/2017/03/14/prenup-prevent-inheriting-spouse/#:~:text=However%2C%20a%20prenuptial%20agreement%2C%20or,event%20of%20a%20spouse's%20death.&text=One%20spouse%20may%20have%20significant,inherit%20most%20of%20their%20assets.) Do I have a rich husband? Wouldn't you like to know!

Sid married Laura when Johnny was six. 

In the eleven years since, Johnny wished his stepfather dead at least once a week. Usually more.

His friends, with their happily married, middle-class parents, didn’t get what the big deal was. It’s not like Sid hit him, or his mom. He spoiled them, in fact, expensive vacations and designer clothes and tickets to red carpet movie premieres. He paid for the country club and Johnny’s karate classes and anything else they could ever want. 

But he never wanted kids. And he definitely didn’t want Johnny.

His irritation grew the older Johnny got, growing bigger and louder, getting into fights and playing his records at all hours. He dismissed Laura’s protests and opinions, deciding Johnny was a loser, that she needed to have a firmer hand with him. That’d it’d be better than shooting off her mouth, the way she always did.

He was _mean,_ and it hurt, even though the idea that Sid – or anyone – was capable of _hurting his feelings_ made Johnny feel stupid and childish. The dark current seemed to rush stronger and stronger the longer the three of them were in that beautiful Encino mansion. Laura came with a kid, and maybe he couldn’t look past it for much longer.

So Johnny wished he’d just go away.

When it actually happened, though, he was more concerned about kicking someone else down.

He was at Cobra Kai, sparring with Dutch, while the rest of the class watched from the edges of the mat. The phone in Kreese’s office started to ring, punctuating the silence. Dutch aimed a roundhouse kick, and Johnny dodged it, rolling to knock his other leg out from underneath him. 

“Point,” the black flag went up, and Kreese stepped away to answer the call. He usually let it ring during class, more focused watching their progress, especially this close to the All-Valley.

But Johnny is just that good. The knowledge makes his chest feel warm.

“Cobra Kai. Well, hello, darling,” he heard Kreese say faintly, as he knocked Dutch to the ground with his fist. That meant he was talking to a woman. Dutch got an arm around his neck, dragging him to the ground. Shit, got distracted. 

“Mr. Lawrence?” He thought he was going to be yelled at for letting his guard down. Kreese stood in the threshold of his office, jerks his head. “I need to speak with you. Mr. Brown, Mr. Sanchez, starting stances, now.”

He and Dutch exchanged a look of confusion as he rolled off of him. Sensei never let anyone bail out halfway through a match. 

“Your mother called,” Kreese said, not even waiting for Johnny to close the door behind him. “Your stepfather has passed away.”

Johnny blinked. All he felt was the nudging sensation he should be feeling _something._ “How?”

“He had a heart attack in his office.” Kreese said, fixing him with a beady stare. “Laura would like you to go home right now. Of course, it’s up to you.”

Johnny thinks about leaving, sitting in the fancy living room Sid insisted on calling the parlor and pretending to be sad.

“I’ll stay, Sensei.”

Kreese squeezed his shoulder, leading him back into the dojo. “Good man.”

* * *

The funeral is boring. The wake, or shiva, or whatever they're calling the interminable flow of stranger's cars in the driveway, is even worse.

Despite being October, it's ninety degrees outside and Johnny’s sweating to death in his black suit. His house is full of industry professionals who drink too much and keep touching the small of Laura’s back, like that’s going to console her. 

She doesn't flinch at their dirty hands. She smiles bravely, accepts condolences. Pokes Johnny to remind him to stand up straight. With her glossy blonde hair piled on top of her head, her black dress with a sweetheart neckline, she looks like Princess Grace. 

Johnny has not seen her cry once since Sid’s secretary called her, screaming, with the news.

 _This is your son? You’re much too young to have a teenager!_ They say over, and over. Laura makes the same jokes about moisturizer. It plays better with this crowd than teenage pregnancy.

Bobby stops by with his parents and Laura mercifully lets them go up to Johnny's room for half an hour to take a breather.

“My mom needs to talk to yours before we go,” Bobby says, sitting on the edge of the bed, drinking beer while Johnny tears his coat and tie off. “Her firm has all this stuff from your stepdad’s will.”

“They have to talk about that _now?”_ He pushes up the window to let a breeze in; he’s so overheated his face is starting to look like a tomato. His mom has been up since five AM, he wishes everyone would leave so they can both sleep for ten hours.

Bobby shrugs. “She says it’s best to get started right away, when things are complicated like this.”

Johnny stops, looks over his shoulder. “Complicated how?”

“I dunno. She can’t really talk about it.” He holds out the bottle, still half full of warm Coors. “You want some?”

The sun is setting when the last well-wisher leaves, and even later when Mrs. Brown packs up her briefcase and calls up the stairs that Bobby needs to get a move on, they're heading out.

Johnny’s been stuffing his face with cold cuts and croissants from the wake all day, but his stomach is still grumbling. In his t-shirt and sweats, he pads downstairs to find a frozen pizza in the fridge.

Laura is drinking a glass of red wine at the breakfast nook. Her leg is curled up under the skirt of the dress she’s still wearing. Her thin shoulders shake, her manicured palm clapped over her eyes. 

She’s _crying._

Johnny fights the urge to back out of the room. He loses. 

But when he leans back on the polished floor, it creaks. His mom jumps, wiping her eyes hastily with the edge of her hand. 

“Hey, baby!” she grins too wide, lip wobbling. “I’m sorry, today was just...hard.”

He sits down on the stool next to her. It never occurred to him that Laura might actually love Sid. The idea sits in his stomach like a stone. _Who could love someone who makes them feel that weak?_

“You’ll meet someone else,” he tries.

Laura lets out a wet laugh.

“All those hormones running around. You are a monster.” She sighs, smooths her hair back from her face. “Do you know what a prenup is?"

Johnny shrugs. It was one of those words they threw around on _Dynasty,_ something he would not admit to watching under penalty of death. "It's that thing you do before you get married, right? Saying you don't get any money if you..." he swallowed. "If you leave him."

"That's right. When Sid and I were engaged, I signed an prenup. I thought as long as we were married, I was set. You and me, were set." She hiccups, sending the sour smell of grapes onto the air. "But 'til death do us part is _literal_ with some people, right?"

Johnny rubs his face, eyes stinging from exhaustion. "Mom, what are you talking about?"

"I talked with Mrs. Brown, about Sid’s will. He left us the house, and our cars. Your bike.”

“That’s good. Isn’t it?” Johnny hadn’t been aware losing his Avanti was even an _option,_ and the panic that coursed through him in the second he considered it was enough to make him feel faint. 

Laura grips the stem of her wine glass. “Because of the prenup, that’s _all_ he left us. His bank accounts, investments, the back 10 he got on all the movies he produced – they’re all going to Ginger.”

Ginger was Sid’s first wife, who had the gall to turn forty. Johnny had never met her, only heard her name muttered as a curse when Sid was pissed at his mom. _Would’ve stayed with that cunt Ginger if I wanted to get bitched at all the time._

That cunt who didn't have to sign a prenup. That cunt who now got upwards of forty-five million dollars. 

“Oh.” That was all Johnny manages to say. Laura lets out another wet sob, leaned over to wrap him in her arms. 

“I just – all this was so you would have a good life,” she weeps into his shoulder. “The property taxes alone – no.” She sniffs hard, leans back so they're looking at each other, nose to nose. “No. Look at me. You are a kid. This is not your burden to bear.”

Johnny kicks his foot against the counter. “Mom, I’m seventeen. Don’t lie and tell me everything’s fine when it’s not. Should I get a job or something?” The concept was foreign to him, something that strangers did, like speak two languages or talk to their dads. 

Laura runs a thumb over his cheekbone softly. “You’re so sweet. Baby, minimum wage is not going to keep this place running.”

“Do we have to sell the house?” The panic of losing his car was nothing compared to this. He couldn’t go back to living in a grimy little studio like they had when he was little, he _couldn’t_. He wouldn’t have the pool or the country club and nobody would be his friend anymore, Ali would never take him back. He’d be a loser, _again_.

Laura gets up, takes another wine glass from the cabinet, and uncorked the bottle of Merlot she'd already made her way through. “We’re not gonna think about any of that tonight.” She poured Johnny a small glass and pushed it towards him. 

“Um–”

“You think I was born yesterday? I saw you and Bobby sneaking beers all afternoon. What, you only like the cheap stuff?” She tries to smile, but her lip trembles again, her eyes getting shiny. Johnny clicks the glass against hers and downs it as fast as he could. Anything to make her stop crying. “Hey. To new beginnings.”

“Yeah,” Johnny says, wondering why that sounded like a death sentence. “To new beginnings.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t understand why we can’t buy another house,” Johnny says, slouching against the side of the moving van.

Laura, who heard this complaint six times since they got in the car that morning, ignores him.

The realtor sold the Encino Hills house for five under asking. Told Laura it was a tough market right now, and the number she got was nothing to sneeze at. Mrs. Brown helped her use the profits to set up a college fund for Johnny and a savings account for herself. Not even a tenth of what they had with Sid, but respectable. A start. Johnny even started to think it would be nice, as he balled up his clothes and crammed them in bags. Having a place that his stepfather had never darkened the door of, rooms where he'd never made Johnny feel stupid or girlie or weak.

Then Laura announced they were moving three miles north to an _apartment complex_. In _Reseda_. 

It wasn’t as grubby as some of the others in the area, much better than the crappy studio they’d had in San Francisco when he was little. A two bedroom with a washer-dryer, a rack out front for his bike. There were hardwood floors, the landlord bragged when he let them in, installed just two years ago.

Johnny hates it. 

“Mom. Seriously. I've looked at the numbers. We don’t need to live like this,” he says, even as he follows his mom up the stairs, carrying a box labeled KITCHEN STUFF. “The money we got from the sale–”

“Has to last us.” Laura props the front door open with her foot, waving him in. “I’m not going to blow all my savings on some McMansion and then not have enough to feed you two weeks later.”

Johnny bristles, slamming the box on the counter. The contents clatter loudly. “I can take care of myself.”

“You’re not even taking care of our plates,” she says shortly, nudging him out of the way to open the box and inspect the damage. “I need you to curb the attitude today, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“Hey.” A hand on his chin, pulling his face down to look at her. “This is temporary. I’ll get a job, and we’ll get back on our feet.” Before Johnny can answer, Laura steps back, takes both his hands in hers. “Deep breath. Say it with me. _This too shall pass._ ”

“C’mon, stop with your hippie shit.” Johnny pulls out of her grip.

Laura sighs, rips the tape seal off another box and crumbles it into a ball. "Go get some air. Come back in when you're my sweet boy." 

His face heats up. He's not _five,_ she can't give him a _time out._ Turning on his heel, he storms out the front door, slamming it hard behind him. 

The pool in the middle of the courtyard is drained. He wonders if someone died in it. This seems like the kind of neighborhood where people get shot in drive-bys and dumped in the nearest hole.

“Excuse me, are you the ones moving in?” 

Johnny jumps, fist curling, expecting to have to fight off a crack-addled homeless person. But it’s just some lady, compact with dark, springy hair. In a dorky turtleneck and patterned vest that moms who don't look like Laura always wear. She raises both hands, but she’s grinning while she does. Mock-alarm. 

“Didn’t mean to startle you, honey.” There’s something familiar in the lilt of her voice, he can’t quite place it.

“You didn’t.” He locks his arms back down by his sides. “Yeah. My mom brought us here. It’s just temporary.”

The woman glances over his shoulder, like the door isn’t closed and she can size up Laura for herself. “It’s just the two of you?”

He nods cautiously. Is she casing them, trying to find the weak spot and rob them blind? He’d like to see her try and get past him.

“Well, I have to run to the market, but you just tell your Ma if she needs anything, Lucille over in 6C can help. We single moms have to stick together!” She smiles and squeezes Johnny’s shoulder, like they’re good pals. Like she knows anything about him and his life. 

He waits, with balled up fists, until he sees her disappear around the block, before jogging out to the truck to bring in the next load of crap.

When he comes back in, Laura pointedly ignores him, singing along loudly to her radio.

The nice furniture from the house seems overstuffed and cramped in the apartment. Johnny’s queen-sized mattress takes up almost all of his new room, but the look he gave Laura when she suggested trading it in for a twin ended all conversation on the matter. He pins up his Bruce Lee and Christie Brinkley posters. In the kitchen, he can hear his mom badly belting “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. 

Johnny sits on the edge of his bed, peels off his jeans and changes into a fresh t-shirt, feeling overheated and gross from all the moving. She can’t carry a tune to save her life, but the sound of music soothes his frazzled nerves. For the first time all day, he breathes.

_This too shall pass._

"...you need me to lift anything for you?" He peeks around the corner, a begrudging truce. "I can get the TV up somewhere."

“Let's tackle that tomorrow. I’m going to make some dinner.” She says, and throws him a small smile over her shoulder. Forgiven, as always. He hears a faucet turn on, then abruptly off. “Actually, we're getting a pizza.”

“The phone isn’t hooked up yet." There's a knock on the door as Laura holds up her hand, which has a reddish-brown blotch in the center of her palm, running down her fingertips.

“Well, the water’s running rusty. I think I saw a payphone outside the complex,” she says, crossing the room to answer it. “Why don’t you call Gino’s? I think they still deliver this far out.” She swung open the door. “Oh. Or maybe not.”

Johnny, still in his boxers, wonders what god he’d angered to end up with Daniel LaRusso standing on the walkway outside, a heavy glass dish of lasagna in his arms.

“Um, I live across the courtyard,” he said, incredulous grin spreading across his dumb face. “My Ma told me to bring this over to the new neighbors.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time for a lil POV switch, because I do what I want!

Daniel is having trouble processing that the woman who opened the door is a mom, let alone _Johnny Lawrence’s_ mom.

She is _beautiful_ , golden hair falling in soft waves on either side of her smooth, young face. Barefoot, in jeans and an embroidered peasant blouse, she looks more like a girl plucked out of Woodstock and dropped into 1984. 

“Aren’t you the sweetest!” She beams, taking the dish out of his hands. “Come in, come in!”

Daniel’s eyes cut to Johnny, whose hands balled into tight fists at some point in the ten seconds since his mother answered the door. 

He hasn’t stood this close to him since Halloween a few weeks before, getting ripped apart like a chew toy until Mr. Miyagi stepped in. His bones still ache, when he thinks about it for more than a second. But in this moment, the pain gets hot, turns to indignation.

No. Johnny doesn’t get to make him run again.

A smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Well, sure, since you offered.”

Johnny disappears down the hall. A second later, the door slams. _He’s in his bedroom_ , Daniel knows. His apartment has the exact same layout. He hopes Johnny’s also has a mold problem on the corner of the ceiling. 

The woman clicks her tongue. “Johnny–”

“Calm down! I’m putting on pants!” Comes the muffled reply. Daniel can’t stop the snort of laughter that escapes, almost giddy, from his mouth. Poor little rich boy. This is unbelievable.

“I’m Laura Lawrence,” Johnny’s insanely hot mother says, like that’s not a ridiculous name. Balancing the dish on her forearm, she unwraps the lasagna and leaves the plastic film crumbled at their feet.

“Daniel. LaRusso. Me and my Ma are in 6C.” He says. If Laura recognizes the name as that of her son’s favorite punching bag, she doesn’t show it in her face. Instead, she scoops out a messy chunk of lasagna with her fingers and pops it in her mouth, making a satisfied moaning noise as she swallows. Daniel shoves his hands in the pockets of his camo pants, thinking he should maybe look somewhere else.

“Oh, that’s good. Your mother is an angel. Johnny! Dinner!” She carries the tray to the counter and starts pulling plates out of a moving box. 

Johnny appears at the end of the hallway again, in jeans, with his Walkman headphones looped around his neck. He’s got his red Cobra Kai jacket on too, like battle armor. _What a jackass._ “I’m not hungry."

“Since when?” Laura laughs. “Here, set three places, let's see if we can find the table in this misheggas.”

“Oh–uh–”

“LaRusso doesn’t want to stay.” 

He and Johnny speak at the same time. Laura, turning down the radio as a Def Lepperd song starts blasting, doesn’t seem to hear either of them.

“I think my pitcher is around here somewhere. Do you have your water running, hon?” She asks Daniel, who tears his eyes away from the glowering column of red that is Johnny Lawrence. 

“Um, yeah.”

Laura smiles. “We’re having a little plumbing problem, could I ask you to fill this up at your house and bring it back over? Haven’t had a chance to go to the store for drinks yet.”

“ _Mom!_ _”_ Johnny explodes. His face is almost the same color as his jacket. “Take out an ad in the paper, why don’t you?” 

There he is. Daniel braces his feet, the way Mr. Miyagi has been teaching him, ready for a hit. 

Laura’s cheerful face hardens. For a split second, she does seem old enough to be a mom, exhaustion lining the corners of her eyes and mouth. Daniel recognizes the face well, seen it a thousand times on his Ma, coming home from ten hour shifts, sitting at the kitchen table with overdue bills spread out in front of her and her head in her hands.

He feels a pang in his stomach. It’s not her fault her kid is a tool. 

“Sure thing, Mrs. Lawrence,” he says, and takes the porcelain pitcher off the counter, and shooting Johnny a sickeningly sweet smile. “I’ll be right back.”

“It’s _Ms_ ,” she says, unpacking the silverware. “Trust me.”

He decides to walk around the second floor balcony, rather than go down the stairs and up again on the other side. If he’d chosen the other option, he might’ve heard Johnny’s heavy step behind him.

Instead, he’s pushed up against the stucco blue wall between apartments with an unceremonious _whoosh_ , Johnny’s forearm pressed against his chest.

“Don’t try anything with that,” he growls, nodding down to the pitcher. 

Daniel raises an eyebrow. “Like what? Put lead in it? You caught me, Johnny. Ruined the master plan to break your pipes and make your Ma drink tainted water.”

“Don’t talk about her,” Johnny says, and the pressure on his sternum gets harder. “Don’t talk about this to anyone.”

Daniel lifts his leg, drives it into Johnny’s hip to push him back. It allows just enough enough leverage to sidestep, out of his clutches. “Talk about what? Johnny Lawrence’s broke ass slumming it in Reseda? No more of Daddy's credit card? I talk an awful lot, you don’t know what’s gonna come out.”

Johnny pulls back his arm to swing.

“Hey. Remember the tournament?” _Remember the truce?_ Daniel wonders if Johnny’s even competing anymore, if he can afford karate classes. A pretty big tragedy must’ve befallen the Lawrences to bring them to his turf, maybe something bad enough to demolish everything that had stood in the way of Johnny snapping his neck.

He should’ve gotten more details before opening his mouth. He keeps meaning to work on that. 

But Johnny just slams his fist down against his own leg, the power of Cobra Kai stronger than his own rage. 

“Until then, you stay on your side of the pool–” he nods down at the drained pit below them. “–I stay on mine. And keep your mouth shut, LaRusso, or fuck the tournament, I _will_ beat your ass."

“You can’t divide an apartment complex,” Daniel says, walking backwards towards home with both his arms out, the pitcher swinging in his fingers. “The complex belongs to _all of us, man._ ”

He’s glad he’s close enough to his door that he can slam it before Johnny charges at him. He’s still huffing like a bull when Daniel brings the jug back out, sloshing around. Without a word, he takes it and heads back to his own place.

“You’re welcome!” Daniel shouts into the night air. It rings off the cement. 

But Johnny doesn’t go inside. He stands, just outside the door, motionless. Daniel waits, watching him, for a minute, three. 

When he finally moves, it’s to sit down on the ground, knees up near his chest. He slides his Walkman headphones on and fiddles with the player in his pocket until he’s found a song he likes. It's loud enough that the faint, tinny sound of 'Drop Dead Legs' makes its way to him.

Johnny’s chest rises and falls, eyes closed. The air leaving and going in are the only sign he’s not a statue. That’s how still he holds himself.

It reminds Daniel of the way Mr. Miyagi gets sometimes. If he didn’t know better, he’d say Johnny was meditating. 

A car alarm starts to blare across the street, and Daniel jumps. His arms are gooseflesh, chilly to the touch. He has no idea how long he’s been standing here, watching Johnny, who doesn't seem to sense the disturbance at all, under the thrashing noises of his hair bands.

“What a piece of work,” he mutters under his breath, retreating to his own apartment and turning on the TV too loudly. Nobody can meditate while listening to Van Halen, especially not that asshole.


	4. Chapter 4

Johnny wakes up before his alarm clock the next morning, and uses the extra time to glare at the room's ugly ceiling. The traffic is already rumbling on the freeway outside the windows. He wonders how much longer it’ll take for him to get to school from this shithole.

Maybe that’ll convince his mom to let them move back into Encino. That being here is, like, a detriment to his education. 

They haven’t talked since LaRusso barged in the night before. When Johnny finally calmed down enough to go back inside, Laura had turned off all the lights and locked herself in her room. The lasagna lay forgotten on the counter, with only one piece missing. He set the water pitcher down beside it and cautiously took a bite.

Goddammit. It was really good. 

He hesitated, hand an inch away from knocking on her door, but hot rage boiled through him again when he thought of her asking LaRusso for water, like they were beggars, at someone’s mercy.

So he just went to bed without brushing his teeth or taking off his jacket. 

Now when he looks in the mirror, he’s flushed from sleeping in too many layers, and there’s a furry film in his mouth that makes him feel grody as shit.

Turning on the bathroom faucet this morning, the water is still coming out rusty. He splashes a little under his arms anyway, but figures there’s no point in subjecting himself to a shower when he’s going to get sweaty at karate after school.

Karate. The thought of practice makes him feel calmer than he has since the day Sid died. Laura swore up and down they’d find the money for his classes, no matter what. He’d keep kicking ass, seeing his friends, training to put LaRusso back in the dirt where he belongs. 

He stuffs his _gi_ into his backpack, mood lifting at the idea of something staying normal.

Sid had a housekeeper who made breakfast at the house every morning. A huge spread of waffles, eggs, bacon, fresh pressed orange juice. Today, Laura hands him a silver-wrapped square.

“I got you Pop-Tarts from the vending machine downstairs.”

“Strawberry?” He hates all the other flavors. 

Her eyes aren’t as bright and teasing as usual, but she still replies archly. “It’s almost like I raised you or something.”

She’s wearing one of her gauze-y, floral dresses, cinched with a man’s belt, which hasn’t been a cool look since, like, 1969. Sometimes Johnny wishes his mom would get with the times already. 

“Are you gonna get a job today?” he asks, ripping open the package and biting the top half of both pastries off in one go. 

“I’m going to try.” She glances at the clock radio on the kitchen counter behind her. “And _you_ are going to try and get to school on time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he’s still wearing his clothes from yesterday, but it’s not like anyone important saw him in them. 

“No fights, please!” She says, pressing her hands together in front of her chest, as if in prayer. Johnny, shouldering his backpack, can’t help but smirk; she’s sent him out the door with that almost every day since the sixth grade. “Oh, and see if that boy from 6C needs a ride!”

“Yeah, totally,” he mutters, swinging the door shut fast behind him.

He drives, even though finding a parking spot is a bigger pain in the ass. Days like today, he needs to blast music loud enough to shake the frame of the Avanti, something just not possible on his bike.

Traffic is gnarly in this part of town, landscaping trucks and electrician vans clogging the roads and spewing black smoke into the air. Johnny puts in his Boston cassette and stares aimlessly at the grimy strip malls, shuttered CASH 4 GOLD storefronts. At the bus shelter, he sees two elderly women waiting on the bench, a young mom jiggling her crying baby on her hip. LaRusso, crammed in the corner, backpack in his lap, resting his chin on the top.

Those gigantic brown eyes flick up and catch Johnny’s. Then they roll in derision. 

At the intersection, the light turns green. He grins at LaRusso and floors it, leaving him in the dust.

* * *

School is boring as usual, an endless blur of hard chairs and teachers droning on about shit no one cares about. He sees LaRusso in the hall, chatting up Ali. Her cute, freckled nose wrinkles when she notices Johnny looking at her, and she catches Daniel’s arm, dragging him farther down the hall.

“What a bitch,” Dutch mutters, and Johnny reflexively jabs him in the ribs even though, yeah, what’s her problem?

“I dunno, man, you smell _ripe_ ,” Bobby says. “New house not have a shower?”

“Shut up,” Johnny says, and resists the urge to sniff himself in the middle of the hallway. “I went for a run before school.”

“When are we gonna see the new place, anyway?” Tommy asks, and the rest of his friends make noises of agreement. 

Johnny shrugs. “It’s kind of a mess, we’re still moving in. The movers are, I mean. They’ve dropped so much shit.”

“Totally, one guy broke my mom’s vanity mirror when we first bought the summer house and I thought she was gonna shank him,” Dutch says, and everyone laughs. 

“Please tell me you still have a pool, I can’t stand if we have to go to the country club every time it’s hot,” Bobby says.

Dutch waves this off. “The club is way better, all those private school girls, wandering around in bikinis?”

The Cobra devolve into arguing about whether private school girls are sluttier in general or if just the ones they’ve plied with wine coolers. None of them seem to notice Johnny didn’t answer the question.

Practice is a relief, a chance to release his rage on boards and sandbags and his friends faces. He gives Jimmy a bloody nose and twists Bobby’s leg so hard he almost breaks it.

“Jesus, man!” Bobby says, managing to twist away. “Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

“Good work today, Mr. Lawrence,” Kreese tells him as they all pack up to leave. “Keep that fire burning, and you’ll be looking at your third championship.”

This buoys his mood all the way out to the parking lot, where Bobby grabs the handle to the passenger’s side of the Avanti.

“Whoa. What are you doing?”

Bobby cocks his head. “Getting a ride home.”

Shit. He always drove Bobby home after karate, their houses were only three blocks from each other. They used to be, anyway. 

“Right.” He forces himself to keep a neutral expression. “Okay, hurry up. I got places to be.” 

“Got a hot date with your right hand?” 

Johnny shoves him. 

“So, wait, which one is yours?” Bobby asks, as they wound through Encino, the houses getting bigger, the lawns manicured. 

Johnny points vaguely down a cul-de-sac, to half a dozen identical blocky mansions. “That one, with the rose bushes out front.”

Bobby lifts his eyebrows. “This is like two miles from my house, I didn’t know you were driving this far out of the way to drop me off.”

“It’s not that far,” Johnny says, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead.

* * *

By the time he fights his way through the traffic, back to Reseda, it’s twilight. If he couldn’t smell himself earlier, he can now. Christ, the last thing he needs is to be poor _and_ dirty.

There's a note on the door when he climbs the stairs. _Baby – over at 6C, come over!,_ in his mom’s bubbly handwriting. 

He groans, presses his head against the wall, and drags himself across the way like a man being brought to the gallows. 

Laura is sitting on the LaRussos’ couch, drinking red wine with Daniel’s mom. She’s still in the dress he saw this morning, but her hair is wrapped up in a towel. 

“There he is!” She says, when Johnny lets himself in. Her voice is just a little too loud, which is how he knows this isn’t her first glass of wine. “Lucille, this is _my_ son, Johnny. He’s a senior too.”

Johnny’s used to getting dragged around like a toy at the country club, random people he doesn’t know pinching his cheeks, commenting on how big he’s gotten. He lets the mom chatter wash over him as Laura and Lucille talk about how much boys eat and crap like that. 

“Look at this outfit!” Lucille grabs the sleeve of Johnny’s _gi_ , tugging him closer to her. “Do you do karate?”

He hears footsteps in the hall, and deliberately avoids looking up when a slight figure appears in the kitchen, a flash of dark hair and skinny limbs. “Yes.”

Lucille smiles, but it’s a little smaller now. Like she’s distracted by a math problem she’s trying to solve in her head. “What a coincidence.”

“Now, Daniel is actually very close with the building’s handyman,” Laura says, and Johnny chews the side of his cheek. “He’s gone down and gotten the man to clear out our pipes, isn’t that sweet?”

“Super sweet,” Johnny rolls his eyes. 

Laura nudges his ankle with her foot. _Thank you,_ she mouths, and Johnny wants to kill her.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, looking somewhere at least a foot to the left of Daniel’s dumb face. 

“My pleasure,” he smirks, and sits down on the couch, so close to his mom their hips are touching. _What a little twerp_.

“Well, we know what it’s like to strike out on your own,” Lucille says. “I was widowed myself, actually, almost ten years ago now.”

Daniel stops smiling. Johnny nods back towards the door. “I’m gonna…”

“Oh, of course,” Laura, waves him off. “Hey, there’s some food from Orient Express in the fridge, Lucille brought it over.”

“Yeah, you’ll be eating a lot of that if the job works out,” Daniel intones, and both mothers laugh. Johnny feels his fists curl. He doesn’t like being the only one not in on a joke. 

“What job?”

“Well, I’m training to be an assistant manager at the restaurant,” Lucille says, cutting her eyes to Laura and winking. “And we’ll need a new hostess to take my place once I’m promoted.”

Johnny turns his over in his head. His mom hasn’t had a job in eleven years, didn’t even finish high school. What other kind of place would hire her? Couldn’t she at least be a cocktail waitress in LA, somewhere classy? 

LaRusso is studying his expression. Does he expect him to be happy? Mad? _Grateful_ to him and his stupid mom? 

“It’s not that bad,” he says, softly, like he's speaking to Johnny and Johnny alone, a secret their parents can't hear. 

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” Johnny blurts out.

He scalds himself with the mercifully clean water, like he can scrub off this whole reality if he uses enough heat.

Orient Express. Why does he know that name? 

It hits him right as he’s washing his hair. He sees it every night. It’s right across the street from the dojo. 

“Fuck.” The shampoo gets in his eyes, stinging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When they were sixteen, my grandma used to walk to school and every day she'd see my grandpa speed by in his souped up Chevy, glance at her, and keep driving. She'd turn to her friends and say “what an asshole.” Been married 55 years this March!


	5. Chapter 5

Lucille thought it would be good to have another boy nearby.

The complex was mostly elderly people who’d been in Reseda since it was a farming town, and one Mexican family with a daughter who couldn’t be more than five. Daniel always had trouble making friends, even before they left Jersey, but here the only person he seemed to spend time with was Mr. Miyagi, or else by himself, kicking around the living room for God knows what reason.

She tells herself that she’s just not seeing the full picture. In the first few months of frantic job searching and unpacking and school registration, she’s only catching glimpses of Dan, times when he happens to be alone. That he’s growing up and must have a whole social life she knows nothing about.

One that gave him a black eye he tried to hide with Ray-Bans and a cockamamie story about falling off his bike.

The idea kids are pushing around her son isn’t new, but still fills her with the same rage it did when Daniel came home from first grade in tears, with skinned knees and the straps of his new backpack ripped off. She knows he’s small for his age, has the kind of delicate features that make people think he’s queer on sight. And Lord knows he can’t tell when to stop talking. 

But this was supposed to be a fresh start for both of them. She wants Dan to have the whole package. Friends, a girlfriend, a community of people who have his back, who get what a special person he is. What better candidate than another teenage boy sulking on the balcony, just a few yards away from home?

Johnny seems more uncomfortable in his own skin than anyone who looks like _that_ should. His Ma is sweet – a little young, if you ask Lucille – but none of that shines through in her son. Every muscle in his body is tense, coiled. Ready to spring into attack the moment someone gets too close. 

Then tonight, showing up in those dopey white pajamas. He does karate. He knows how to fight. How to hurt.

_I hate this place! I hate it, I want to go home! Why can't we just go back home?_

She ushers Laura out with promises to talk to her boss at the restaurant during her shift tonight. The door is barely closed when she whirls on Daniel. 

“Do you know Johnny from school?” She asks, trying to keep her voice bright, casual.

Daniel leans against the wall, arms crossed. “I’ve seen him around.” 

She gives a look. He stares right back. 

After a few seconds, she sighs, goes to slip on her black work clogs. “You know you can tell me anything, right Dan?” 

He looks down at the floor, drags the toe of his sneaker in an arc. “I know.”

More silence. She needs to get to work. “Make sure to eat something, okay?”

“I will. You’re gonna be late, Ma.”

Lucille makes sure to lock the front door when she leaves.

* * *

Daniel makes himself a sandwich and aimlessly flicks through the TV for a few minutes before going back to his room. 

Having the apartment to himself is nothing new. After the sudden invasion of Lawrences though, all the quiet, empty space feels unusually luxurious. 

Ma is about two minutes from figuring out Johnny’s the one kicking the shit out of him six ways to Sunday. It’s not even Daniel’s fault, he’s been nothing but smiley and cordial around their moms. Johnny’s the one acting like a dick, as _always_ , glaring like he’s going to choke Daniel out if he says one wrong word.

Does Johnny think he’s some kind of baby, goes crying to his mommy whenever he gets in a fight? He’s from Jersey. He’s no snitch.

Daniel flops onto bed with a huff. After a second, he realizes the buzzing in his body isn’t just annoyance.

He needs his magazines. 

When he was fifteen, he took the train into New York to buy them from a store on Christopher Street. He wore a Mets cap and dark sunglasses, but the cashier didn’t even blink. No way Daniel was the first confused boy to bolt in and out of the place with a red face, clutching skin mags in a paper bag to his chest with an iron grip.

They made the cross-country trip buried in the bottom of his suitcase and currently resided pinned between his mattress and bed frame, pages soft from how often they'd been touched.

It’s not like it's particularly spectacular gay porn, but there's no way he's tempting fate by updating his stash around _here._

He sticks his left hand under his waistband while his right flips through the crinkled _Playgirl_ pages. The oiled-up guys, muscles straining in tiny shorts, abs flexing, usually got him going as fast as thinking about Ali in her cheerleading skirt, if not faster. 

Tonight, his mind kept going back to Johnny, the nerve of that guy. The pained expression painted across his face when he thought about his Ma being a hostess. The same way Daniel probably looked, when his own mother tried to spin years of wasted computer courses and night school as not mattering, that they were fine on the bottom rung of the ladder. Stuck in the same place as always.

His hand stutters, realizing this much thinking about Johnny, picturing Johnny’s face during jerking off, was the exact opposite of relaxing. It was actually kind of weird.

Daniel throws the magazine under his bed and gives up, dropping his head against his pillow. The sounds of the neighborhood on a Monday night are just as noisy as they were back in Newark. Planes descending into Burbank. Dogs barking, a few seconds of a rap song blasting, then fading as the car playing it drives on into the night. The earthy, tangy smell of weed.

Actually, that one seems much closer than the others.

He gets up on his knees, pushes back the curtain of his open window, that looks out onto the courtyard.

Johnny’s listening to his Walkman, legs dangling off the edge of the second-floor walkway, elbows balanced on the metal rung, a very badly rolled joint pinched in his fingers. His hair is wet, darker blonde against the back of his neck.

“You know, cops actually arrest people around here for that,” he says. Johnny’s head whips back and forth, trying to locate the voice. Daniel waves at him through the screen. 

Johnny’s shoulders drop, but don’t fully unclench. He pushes his headphones down to his neck. “Can you leave me alone for five goddamn minutes?”

“Um, pot? It’s kettle. You’re black.” 

“No I’m not. I’m...Norwegian, or something.” He takes another hit. 

The smoke is still dissipating into the night when Daniel, against his better judgement, pushes the screen up and climbs out the window to join him. Johnny’s clearly smoking something mellow, letting Daniel sit within a yard of him without even making a fist. 

Hey, they’re still, technically, on their sides of the pool.

“When does it stop being bad?” Johnny asks, blowing smoke up at the night sky, stars completely blotted out by city lights. 

“What?”

“You said...all this...it's not that bad. When does it start being good?” 

Daniel laughs. “I’ll let you know when it happens.”

Johnny eyes shoot knives at him. “Screw you, LaRusso.” 

He lifts both hands. “Just being honest. At least you don’t have five meatheads beating the snot out of you every time you turn around.”

The glare intensifies. “At least you have Ali.”

 _I do?_ A flutter of pleasure rises in Daniel’s stomach, but he stores it in the _analyze later_ section of his brain. “At least you have a car. And a license. No taking the stinking city bus to school every day.”

Johnny pauses, brow furrowing as he tries to think of the next one-up. “At least you have a dad.”

“My dad died when I was eight.” Typical dumb blonde, Ma mentioned it like two hours ago. He usually doesn’t have to feel the painful twist in his chest twice in one day.

“You still have one, though. On your birth certificate and everything.” Johnny says, taking another hit. Those blue eyes are rimmed red from the smoke. “Saw mine in Sensei’s files once, it’s just got the line for ‘mother’.”

Daniel shifts. He reaches out to take the joint, but Johnny jerks it away protectively, an animal guarding its food. “What, you’re tellin’ me you’re _immacolato?_ Sent down to save humanity from our sins?”

“You know, she won’t even tell me his name?” Johnny continues like he hasn’t heard him. “I bet she doesn’t even know.” 

He’s not sure if Johnny realizes he’s calling his Ma a whore or not. “Laura seems nice,” he tries feebly.

“I know she is.” Johnny says sharply, like he just realized who he’s been talking to. He pulls himself up into standing, crushes the dried up joint under his heel. “I…” he starts, then just nods to Daniel, heading back to his own apartment. 

He must’ve gotten a lift off that second hand smoke, because Daniel feels weird, loose, as he climbs back into his room through the window.

He strips off his clothes and crams them in the hamper, so his Ma can’t smell the weed. Back in bed, he finds his hands drifting between his legs again. The strange, limp, peacefulness in his head and chest make his second attempt to get off much more successful than the first.


	6. Chapter 6

If Johnny even _sees_ another spring roll, he's gonna puke.

Laura's been a hostess at Orient Express for two weeks, and they’ve had Chinese food for lunch, dinner, and occasionally breakfast for one week and six days. 

“At some point, I probably should’ve learned to cook,” she says, as they sit on the couch, stabbing at the white paper boxes with forks. (She used the chopsticks to tie up her hair.) “I can do pasta. Cut up apples like a mother.”

“Fried bologna,” Johnny adds, swallowing his six billionth bite of lo mein. He picked all the shrimp and vegetables out of it, but even the noodles are a little weird and tangy for his taste. Not like that bologna. He has a blurry memory of Laura making it for breakfast, back in San Francisco. It was _awesome_.

“Mmm!” She points at him, her mouth full, in agreement. “I am _amazing_ at fried bologna. It’s cheap to get too, I’ll tell you that much.” 

Johnny winces before he can stop himself. “C’mon, Mom.”

“Okay, no money talk.” She sets aside her food, turns on the couch and grips both his shoulders. “John Francis. Light of my world. I haven't looked upon your beautiful face in days. Tell me of your life."

He blushes, ducks his head. "My mom's talking like it's medieval times. I think she might be on something."

"Fresh." She swats him. "How's school? Karate?"

He always feels like he’s being interrogated when she stares at him like this. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

“Girls?”

Where’s a LaRusso busting into the apartment like a sitcom character when you need one? “I dunno. Ali...she just won’t talk to me. If I could just get her to...I think I could convince her to give me another shot. We’ll get back together.”

Laura smiles. The sadness behind it sets his teeth on edge. “It's okay if you don't, you know."

"Mom."

"I hate to tell you this, but most people don’t end up marrying their high school sweetheart.”

“Whatever. You don't get it.” He doesn’t think his mom has ever loved anyone as much as he loved Ali. They were together for two _years_. They lost their virginity to each other, said _I love you_ for the first time. Doesn’t that mean anything to anyone? 

“Come on, baby. You think you’re the first person in history to get dumped? As much as it might feel like it, this is not the end of the world.”

The night Ali broke up with him, Sid and his mom were at the premiere of _Trading Places_ in West Hollywood. Johnny stormed around the empty mansion for hours, drinking Sid’s fancy rum straight out of the bottle and kicking a few holes in the plaster, pretending he wasn’t crying. He didn’t care if tomorrow never came. He _welcomed_ the end of the world. 

He never wants to feel that sad again.

“So you're saying I need to go out, meet someone else, get dumped again, and start the cycle all over?”

She combs his hair back from his forehead with her fingers. “I just hate the idea of you being so gun-shy you stop trying.” 

“I _am_ trying. With Ali.”

Laura throws her hands up in the air, surrendering. “Okay, Romeo. _I_ am going to go ice my feet. Eight hour shifts are not for the weak of spirit.” 

He watches her limp to the bathroom, stopping only to stuff the day’s tips into the glass mason jar on the shelf in the hallway. It’s about three-quarters full, mostly fives and tens, way too many pennies. It pisses Johnny off. He stands, throws the box of lo mein towards the trash can. It misses the target by at least a foot, splattering all over the floor and the bottom of the cabinets.

Whatever. He does karate, not baseball.

The pissed-off feeling is rising, the way it always does when he thinks about Ali breaking up with him. He goes to the kitchen and dials Bobby’s number, twisting the cord around his fingers, staring down at the congealing mess of noodles on the ground.

“Hey. It’s me. I’m picking you up, we’re all going out.”

* * *

Golf N Stuff is hopping, not unusual for a Friday night. Johnny turns on the radio, but it’s swallowed by the sounds of rides and games, people laughing and shrieking. Dutch invited Susan and Barbara along, so people are spilling out of the Avanti. Bobby is riding in the seatwell.

“This is _lame_ ,” Barbara whines, kicking the back of his seat and almost losing half her purple Slushie in the process. “You guys know we live like, fifteen miles from Beverly Hills? Los Feliz? We could go into the city, get some _culture_.”

“Like what?” Johnny asks. In the rearview mirror, he sees Susan jump out of the back window, waving down some friend and disappearing into the crowd. “You wanna go to the ballet?”

Everyone laughs except Tommy, who throws a protective arm around Barbara’s shoulder.

“We could drive to Reseda, fight some gang,” Jimmy cracks. Another wave of laughter. 

“Yeah, go score some ghetto babes,” Dutch says, with the troubling glint in his eye that means someone has to suggest a saner alternative fast or the night is about to go south.

“Please, it’s bad enough we have to go there for karate all the time," Johnny says. “What about the beach?”

“Santa Monica!” Barbara brightens, slapping her hands against her knees and hiccuping. She and Tommy must’ve pregamed. “Suze! Come on! We’re going to Santa Monica!”

Johnny turns. Susan is emerging from the crowd again. His heart does a weird leap-and-crash when he sees she has Ali – and LaRusso – in tow.

He and Daniel have steered clear of each other since that night sitting on the walkway, right after Johnny moved in. He was thoroughly baked by that point in the night, but if he said anything embarrassing, LaRusso would’ve blabbed about it to half the school by now. So it can't've been that bad, when ranked against all their other encounters.

Then again, Ali is wearing LaRusso’s ugly red windbreaker. They were definitely on a date. Still are.

“Come on, Al,” Susan says, tugging her arm. “We never get to hang out anymore.”

A loud honk on the road behind the Avanti makes everyone jump. Daniel’s weirdly tan skin (seriously, Johnny thinks he's secretly Mexican or something) darkens even further. He's _blushing._

A shitty blue minivan is riding his bumper. Behind the wheel, he recognizes Lucille, still dressed for work. She starts to wave to her son, then stops, eyes drawing a triangle between him, Ali, and the car.

Her face tightens, and her gaze holds none of its usual warmth when it falls on Johnny.

Shit. She totally knows. Who he is to Daniel, when no adults are around.

Part of him wants to be himself, tease LaRusso for getting picked up by his _mommy_ , humiliate him in front of Ali and her cute friends. A month ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But something tells him that’d piss Lucille off more than she already is. And if she’s mad enough, what’s to stop her from firing his mom? She is technically Laura’s boss. 

No job, Mom crying in the kitchen again. No job, no getting out of Reseda, back to their old life. His real life.

“You two coming or what?” He blurts out. If Ali looks surprised, it’s nothing compared to the expression on LaRusso’s face. Johnny dips his chin, and they have a split-second conversation with nothing but stares.

_Be cool._

_I will if you will._

Daniel shrugs, cupping his hands around his mouth. 

“We’re going to the beach!” He calls to his mom.

And then he’s in the back of Johnny’s car, Ali on his lap, and there’s nothing to do but hit the gas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Barbara is speaking for me and my inability to comprehend why generations of teenagers in this universe, who live in one of the most fun cities in the world, spend all their free time at an outdoor Chuck E Cheese.
> 
> 2) To the tumblr anon – I would give my left arm for fan art of this fic, by you or others. Please go nuts, if the spirit moves you.


	7. Chapter 7

If there’s one reason Johnny can’t imagine ever leaving Southern California, it’s the beach. 

What could New York or DC offer that compares to drinking stolen beer in the sand, your friends laughing and play-fighting in the surf a few yards away? Even the light pollution from the city isn’t enough to completely blot out all the stars over the sea, the clump of angry, dark clouds on the horizon.

He settles back into the dunes, downs a Coors from the cooler, then another one. For ten minutes, he listens to Dutch's boombox in the sand, watches Susan and Ali try to start a bonfire with a Bic lighter and driftwood. The smell of salt renders him calmer than he's been in ages. 

“Why’d you invite LaRusso?” Bobby asks, plopping down on the ground next to him.

And it’s gone.

Johnny shrugs. “I dunno. Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, right?” 

Bobby laughs, but it’s shallow. In this throat, not his chest. He takes a sip of his own beer. "Whatever you say, Johnny."

Johnny watches Daniel help the girls with the fire, a thin line of smoke rising, curling into the air. _He’s almost as small as Ali_ , he realizes, seeing them shoulder-to-shoulder. She curls a finger around the belt loop in LaRusso’s jeans, tugging him to her side. He grins, ducks his head bashfully. _That small, and he’s still raring to fight. He’s either really brave or really stupid. Probably both._

Daniel catches his glance and heads over. But not before reaching around Ali to hang onto her hip, like they’re running in a very hormonal three-legged race. 

“You gonna share, or just get so bombed we all go through the windshield?” He nods to the Coors. 

Johnny looks over the top of his can dubiously. “You know there’s not apple juice in these things, right, LaRusso?” 

Daniel bends down and plucks the can out of Johnny’s grip, taking a swig before anyone realizes what's happening. “You don’t say.”

Ali and Bobby both turn to stare at him, some mix of stunned (the latter) and preemptively annoyed (the former). That kind of disrespect doesn’t stand with him, especially not from fucking LaRusso. Is he just going to sit there and take it?

He feels his face color, hopes he can blame it on the fire and the shadows of night. “You better get me a new one or I’ll make sure the only drinking you do is through a tube,” he manages.

“Jesus, Johnny,” Ali sighs, but Daniel laughs, walks backwards to the cooler so they can all watch him finish the can, crush it into a neat cube with both his hands. 

Bobby leans over. “You holding weed or something?”

“Yeah, must be the good stuff,” Ali says, her brows knit in confusion over the fact that her ex is currently leaving the new guy in one piece. If they want to blame pot he hasn't been able to afford in a month, that's fine with him.

Johnny does a kip up, jogs over to sit right next to the fire. Still hearing the two of them whisper, he stares determinedly out at the ocean. Dutch is shotgunning a Budweiser while jumping over the break, over and over. He doesn’t look up when Daniel presses a beer in his hand. It numbs the flesh of his palm, the condensation making his wrist feel wet. Then his forearm. Then his elbow.

Wait.

He looks up and gets hit in the eye with a raindrop, just as lightning cracks over the waves. Those dark clouds are suddenly a lot closer than she thought.

“Goddammit,” Susan shouts, taking off her sweatshirt to hold over the fire, but the rain is coming down harder every second, soaking the fabric so it sags, brushing the top of the flame and singing the W in _West Valley Cheerleading_. 

“Leave it, dumb ass!” Dutch shouts, though it’s swallowed by thunder. Jimmy and Tommy run back onto land, legs caked in sand.

Johnny pushes his hair back from his face and pulls Daniel up by the elbow, without even thinking about it. The next sixty seconds are a mad scramble to the car, dragging the cooler, dumping wet jackets in the backseat. Johnny digs his fingers into the metal bar on the back of the Avanti, trying to force the canvas roof out of its accordion fold and over the car. It springs too fast, hitting Daniel in the side of the face.

“Seriously?” He says, ushering Ali into the back seat and rubbing his cheek. 

Johnny shrugs. “These are leather seats.” 

He tries to tune out his friends bitching in the back seat – _“You didn’t watch the news for the weather?” “What am I, eighty?_ ” – and the disgusting rub of his wet jeans against his skin. Even with his wipers going double time, the rain is pounding, turning the road into a blur of streetlights. Barbara’s flip-flops make a gross squelching sound in the backseat. 

“Can you see?” Ali asks, so quietly it’s almost lost under the arguing and the boombox playing a patchy version of “Bette Davis Eyes”. She shifts on LaRusso’s lap, and Johnny watches his wet hands tighten around her waist, long fingers resting gently against the top of her thigh.

His stomach twists.

“It’s fine, let’s go."

He drops off Ali first, and then Bobby, whose habit of asking so many questions is starting to piss him off. 

“Do me last, I’ll just walk from your house,” he says. 

“No!” Johnny snaps. Eight sets of eyes swivel towards him, and he grinds his teeth. “You have the cooler.”

Dutch leans over Barbara's head, bumping into Bobby's ear. He's tipsy enough to use his outside voice. "What crawled up his ass?"

Daniel doesn’t say anything as the rest of the car empties out in front of various Encino Colonials and Spanish revivals, glowing oases in the storm. When it’s down to the two of them in the car, he doesn’t even move from the backseat. 

It makes Johnny feel like he’s a chauffeur, or something. If he drove a limo that smelled like disgusting wet clothes. Shit, he definitely has to get the leather treated, or detailed, or whatever the mechanics always do when he drops his baby off to get freshened up. 

“I think this is the first time it’s rained since I got here,” Daniel says, leaning his head against the window. “Makes this place seem more real, you know? Not just a Beach Boys song.”

Johnny doesn’t respond, because what a stupid remark. Of course it rains, otherwise how would the grass and palm trees grow? It’s not because the darkening roads are turning the drive back to the South Seas complex into a twisting waterslide. 

“Do you need glasses?” LaRusso asks, sticking his head over the side of Johnny’s seat, nearly making him careen off the road.

“Of course not.” What does he look like, a _nerd?_

Daniel doesn’t move. There's a red smudge on his cheek where the Avanti's roof whacked him. “Why did you drive us all back if you can’t see the road?”

“Your idea of a good time sitting in the parking lot for an hour with a bunch of sweaty dudes, LaRusso?” He feels a fist punch his shoulder, and smirks. It fades as he turns off his high beams; the rain against the hot pavement is causing steam to rise, the white clouds reflecting the light back in his eyes. “I needed to do it. So I did. Simple enough rules for you to understand?"

"How admirable." Daniel says drily. "I had no idea we were all almost killed by a man with a code."

"It's not a _code_ –" he turns to glare.

“You missed our street,” Daniel says, and it’s his turn to smirk as Johnny curses and loops back around.

* * *

If the rain was hard by the beach, it’s _drowning_ Reseda. Getting out of his car, Johnny feels an inch and a half of water soak the leg of his pants, pooling into the storm drain under foot.

“Fuck!” He makes a sharp turn, and his keys slip out of his wet hands – and into the sewer. “ _Fuck!”_

He hears a stifled laugh, and shoves LaRusso, just enough to make him stumble backwards on the sidewalk. “What the _fuck_ is so _funny?_ ”

“Karma.” Daniel looks up to the second floor of the complex. “It’s okay, you...come sit in my living room until your mom’s back.”

Johnny slams the Avanti’s door shut so it doesn’t fill with water and sink into the pavement. Why does LaRusso know anything about his mom, much less her current whereabouts? Why is this his life?

“She was at home when I left.” Maybe asleep by now, but that was nothing some incessant knocking couldn’t fix. 

He chooses not to dwell on the fact he just called that hovel upstairs _home._

“Orient Express is twenty-four hours on weekends!” Daniel calls over the thunder. “It’s to cater to drunk people. Your mom took mine’s third shift tonight so…” he fades off.

“So your mommy could pick you up from Baby’s First Date?” Daniel flips him off and starts jogging towards the metal stairs. Why is _he_ pissed? Laura's the one who has to work fifteen hours today. “I can’t leave my car here unlocked! What if someone hot wires it?”

“C’mon, Johnny.” Daniel rest his back against the railing, like its relaxing to lounge in the middle of a thunderstorm. “In this weather, they’re more likely to steal a kayak.”

The warm light of Lucille's nightstand lamp bled under her door, as did the smell of chamomile tea. Awake, but cozy. She doesn't come out at the sound of the Daniel's key in the lock, two pairs of heavy shoes on the ground. Johnny is relieved to avoid her accusing eyes for a little while longer. He's not sure if her son showing up looking like a drowned rat after a night with him would improve or worsen the situation. 

Daniel peels off his jeans and plaid shirt in the middle of the living room, the muscles in his bare back relaxed, loping to his bedroom. Like his body couldn't imagine a single threat in the vicinity.

 _Who the fuck does he think he is, acting like life is easy?_ Johnny thinks, dripping all over Lucille's tacky green carpet. His eyes track those skinny brown legs, and he realizes he's locked his shoulders up somewhere near his ears.

Daniel’s bedroom's the exact same size as his, but it feels roomier. Probably because he’d stuck with a twin bed, left space for a desk, a pile of comics and books stacked against the opposite wall. It feels odd that LaRusso has a bedroom, spent nights sitting and sleeping in here during Johnny's hours of stewing on revenge and killing him. That he's just a guy.

LaRusso throws a bath towel at his face, and Johnny catches it one-handed. He’s changed into sweats and a red sweatshirt that make the lines of him all soft, like something to cuddle. _Jesus, how much did he have to drink?_

“I think I got some XXL T-shirts in a box down there, from my cousin Louie. That guy, he keeps insisting we're the same size. I say he's living in a dream world, y'know?” he gestures under his bed with a tilt of his head, shaking the water out of his ear.

Johnny rubs the towel over his own face and hair, leaving it in uneven blonde spikes. “You calling me fat, LaRusso?”

Daniel grins. “Hey, take it or leave it. Unless my Ma’s still got some maternity clothes around here.”

“Fuck off,” he drops to his knees, blinking hard as floating dust bunnies hit his face. He nudges LaRusso’s crappy knock-off Jordans out of the way, gets his fingers caught through a discarded magazine.

The ripped guy on the cover is naked, hands cupping his cock, gazing blue-eyed and hungry into the camera. _Celebrity Nude - The Blue Lagoon’s Christopher Atkins takes off his loincloth!_

Whoa. Johnny’s eyes flit up to the title, _Playgirl._ Did LaRusso buy this by accident? He kind of gets it – why is _Playboy_ called _boy_ when it’s full of smoking hot babes?

But the pages are worn, flipped through so many times the staples are coming loose. If the purchase was a mistake, there's no way keeping it was.

Johnny turns up the corner of a page, let's his eyes rake over another spread of naked male bodies again. He swallows, shifts. 

“You get stuck down there?”

All he has to do is pick it up, wave it in LaRusso’s face. He's a _fag._ This is nuclear, the trump card to any joke about being poor or a nerd. He could use it to make LaRusso stop flirting with Ali, make him drop out of the tournament. Disappear from his life forever.

He pulls a blue t-shirt that says _Ironbound – 1874, New Jersey_ from a cardboard box, and crawls back out.

“I see no one in your family has taste.”

LaRusso rolls his eyes. “When you’re decent, there’s ravioli in the fridge.”


	8. Chapter 8

Daniel spits up salt water for the fifth time in the past ten minutes. He glances behind his shoulder, but Mr. Miyagi just lifts a palm, expression neutral. _Get up. Try again._

He plants his feet, exhales long and slow, like they’ve been practicing. This time, the wave crashes against his t-shirt and shorts, goes up his nose and stings his eyes. But he stays standing.

“Yes!” He pumps both feet and turns to gauge Mr. Miyagi’s reaction. The next wave takes him down.

“Focus, Daniel-san. Will feel good.”

“Yeah?” He chokes, coughing half the Pacific ocean into his elbow as the tide pulls out again, read for another onslaught. “When?”

“When finish.”

Half an hour later, he’s wrapped in a towel, teeth chattering, as they walk back to Mr. Miyagi’s truck. The stretch of beach looks different in the light of day. Bare, innocent, somehow.

“Y’know, this is the second day in a row I’ve gotten drenched in my clothes. I was here last night, during the storm, did you see that thunder? It was biblical, let me tell you.” 

“Hai.”

Daniel stops, drags his barefoot foot through the sand. It’s still a little claylike, damp and cool from the downpour last night. “I swear, we didn’t jump into Johnny’s car, I’d’ve drowned about twenty yards back that way.”

If anyone asked, he'd say he doesn’t know why he brought it up. Could blame it on his motormouth, the unconscious need to fill every second of silence with chatter. But if he’s honest with himself, he wants to turn the whole weird night over to Mr. Miyagi, who always knows the right thing to say, how to make sense of the world. 

Johnny sat on his couch in boxers and Louie’s old t-shirt for three hours, watching reruns of _Dynasty_ before his mom got back from her shift at one AM and let him in. He’d been even quieter than normal, and left without looking Daniel in the eye.

“Johnny. Yellow hair?” Mr. Miyagi points to his own head. 

Daniel shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Cobra Kai.”

“Yeah.” He hesitates. “Him and his Ma moved into 3C, you fixed their pipes, remember?”

Neither of them say anything for a long time. Daniel pulls his towel tighter around his shoulders. Is Mr. Miyagi _mad_ at him?

“Nothing wrong letting anger go.” He makes a fist, then releases it in a burst, palm wide and open. “Wise.”

“Well, I mean, hey. I never said that.” Daniel says, stopping in his tracks. He _didn’t_. Johnny beat him half to death on Halloween, embarrasses him in front of Ali every chance he gets. Just because they ate cold ravioli in front of nighttime soaps together doesn’t mean he won’t turn on him again.

Like not speaking for hours on end after Daniel offered him shelter and hand-me-downs. What the hell was that about?

"Not friends, then."

He shakes his head. “We’re still gonna fight in the tournament. He’s a total blowhard, never knows when he’s crossed the line.”

“Mmm. Same.” Mr. Miyagi says, pressing his index finger against Daniel’s chest.

He feels both eyebrows lift into his hair. “Ouch. I thought you and me were friends. That guy’s an asshole. He’s popular, he’s rich...well, used to be the last one, anyway.”

“Okay. Different but same.” Mr. Miyagi says, and Daniel hears him chuckling as he storms back to the truck in a huff.

* * *

Johnny’s biceps ache, the tight muscles in his stomach burning the longer he holds a plank. 

The entire class only has to hold themselves up for five minutes at the end of class, but nobody wants to be the first to drop. When he starts to hear gasps and _thumps_ of bodies collapsing against the mat around him, it becomes a different competition, to be the last one standing. At eight minutes, it’s just him and Dutch left.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sensei Kreese step over him, put a foot on Dutch’s back, pressing down hard. He hisses through clenched teeth, arms wobbling. He fights it for another few seconds before falling over. 

Johnny barely has a second to celebrate his victory before the weight is on top of him. He swallows any sound of hurt. Lifting his chin, he looks past the tips of his sweaty hair and grins up at Kreese. 

He can do this all _day_. The pain gives him something to focus on, proof he’s moving forward in life. 

Distraction, from where he is now. The weird churning that’s been roiling in his stomach since Friday night. Which is stupid. _He’s_ not the freak with gay porn under his bed, where anyone could find it. Johnny has nothing to feel weird about. 

Why didn’t he shove it in Daniel’s face, take it and pass it around at school?

He’s thought about it all weekend, and it’s not like he can tell anyone what he found. They’d want to know _why_ he was in LaRusso’s shitty apartment in the first place, and that’s a whole conversation he’s done a pretty good job not having all fall.

So he'll just file it away until he can figure out how to use it. No big deal. His stomach just seem a little behind on the memo, is all.

Kreese lifts his leg again, steps back. “Well done, Mr. Lawrence. Everyone at attention.”

Johnny stands extra tall as the class is dismissed for the day, pretending his back isn’t spasming. 

“Holy shit, that was like twelve minutes! You’re going to demolish at the tournament,” Tommy says, as they head to their bikes in the parking lot.

Dutch, still red-faced from exhaustion, nods. “Yeah, you’re gonna put LaRusso in a body bag.”

“And then some.” Johnny puts on his helmet. Even though Laura helped him find the Avanti’s spare keys over the weekend, he’s glad he chose his bike today. His helmet blocks his peripheral vision, anything and anyone that might be giving him a weird look, _Robert_. 

As Jimmy laces up his boots, conversation drifts to next weekend, the last one before the tournament. It’s also Bobby’s eighteenth birthday. Johnny wishes they could continue talking once they got out of Reseda; his eyes keep jumping across the street to Oriental Express. 

Through the window, he sees his mom, hair tied back in a ponytail with one of her silk scarves. She’s bent over an empty table, rolling silverware in white cloth napkins, stacking them in a neat pyramid. Someone calls to her from the front of the restaurant and her head lifts. He sees her eyes the moment they catch sight of the cluster of motorcycles outside of Cobra Kai. 

She smiles softly, raises a hand in greeting.

He swallows, looks away.

“...was the plan, anyway. Can we still?” Bobby turns to him expectantly. They all do.

“Um, what?"

“This one’s all brawn, no brain, right?” Dutch cackles. 

“My _birthday_ ,” Bobby says, slowly and deliberately, more than a little annoyed. “We were gonna have people over at your pool at the old house. Is that still the plan?"

Shit. He’d totally forgotten. Ali used to say he needed to buy a day planner, the only thing he ever remembered was when to go to karate. Maybe she was right. 

“C’mon, that’s boring,” he says, fidgeting with his handlebar. “You only turn eighteen once, let’s go all out.”

Bobby frowned. “What do you have in mind?”

He thought about Barbara bitching in the car over the weekend, how close LA was. “We’re going into Hollywood, hitting the clubs.”

“Yeah, bottle service!” Dutch’s eyes light up. “My brother gave me his fake when he turned 21, it's burning a hole in my pocket.”

“I…” Bobby chews his bottom lip. “I don’t think I can get money off my parents for something like that.”

“Leave that to me,” Johnny says, revving his engine, and peeling off before anyone can respond.


	9. Chapter 9

Monday after cheerleading, Barbara springs the invitation on Ali, while painting her nails on the bleachers, when she knew Ali couldn’t escape her literal clutches. 

“Tommy and I’ve been putting together a list of all the good clubs on the Sunset Strip. You’re the only one blonde enough to use my cousin’s old ID. You _have_ to come, otherwise it’s just going to go to waste.” 

Ali rolls her eyes. Barbara, applying another layer of green to match their cheerleading uniforms, pretends not to notice. “I’m supposed to have dinner with my parents at the club this weekend.”

“You can do that any time you want,” Susan whines from across the table. “Bring Daniel! I bet he’s never been somewhere like The Roxy.”

Her eyes widen. “Doesn’t that place have hookers upstairs?”

Barbara clucks her tongue. “Stop scaring her, Suze. Ali, think about the music. And all the drinks we can make Johnny buy for us. Haven’t he and Daniel _finally_ stopped biting each other’s heads off? After all that, you _deserve_ free booze.”

Waving her hand in the air to dry the paint, Ali considers this. She hasn’t been into the city in ages, seen a decent concert even longer. Showing Daniel around _does_ sound fun.

“As long as he doesn’t find out Johnny’s paying for everything,” she relents, as Susan and Barbara squeal in delighted victory. “I’m not spending the night dealing with someone’s bloody nose.”

* * *

On Tuesday, in the dream Johnny doesn't tell anyone about, he's lying in bed with a dark head of hair resting on his chest, a slight body on top of his. Not much happens. The boy's skin is heated, nose brushing against his clavicle.

That's the real takeaway. It's a boy.

He buries his face in his pillow when he wakes, swallowing his scream.

* * *

"I dunno, she actually seems excited about it, and I've never been to LA. Like real LA, where you can see the Hollywood sign and everything," Daniel says, from his perch on the bow of Mr. Miyagi's rowboat. It's a beautiful afternoon, the sun sparkling on the lake. "You think I should go?"

"Hai. Too much time alone."

He bristles. "I'm not alone that much. I'm hanging out with you, aren't I?"

"Sometimes Miyagi need silence," he says, and rocks the boat sideways. Daniel hangs on, mostly to curse him out.

* * *

Laura wolf-whistles, index and pinky fingers in her mouth, when he comes out of his bedroom that weekend. Johnny sees his cheekbones turn pink in the mirror she nailed in the hallway.

“Chill out.”

“I’m just admiring my own work, here," she says, coming up behind him _,_ grabbing his chin _._ “Look at that handsome punim.” 

He knows he looks good, even if his mom is kind of ruining it. Gel in his hair, tight jeans and equally constricting AC/DC t-shirt under his leather jacket. The nice black one he got for Christmas last year; as much as he loves his red Cobra Kai number, he needs to appear as grown up as possible tonight.

“You dressing up for someone? Maybe a certain _Alison?”_

"I thought you said I should get over her," he snaps. 

Laura drops her hand. "Since when do you listen to me?"

Her smile is a little strained, the way it got when she was trying in vain to buoy Sid's bad moods, which immediately makes Johnny feel like a piece of shit. He's been feeling like that a lot, lately.

He busies himself with the collar of his jacket. “Aren’t you going to work?” Laura’s still wearing the _All Power to All the People_ t-shirt she sleeps in, which he’s pretty sure is older than him.

She shakes her head, heading back to the couch. “Nope, tonight's my night off. I’m going to drink wine and watch TV. I might go wild and fall asleep without taking off my bra.”

“Mom! Gross.” Crap, he was counting on an empty apartment for this. Now he's going to have to move fast.

Laura laughs, delighting in ruffling his feathers, as always. “Well, tell me about your glamorous plans. Going to a party?” A creak as she turns around, arms hanging over the back of the couch. “Got a date?”

What is her _obsession_ with his love life all of the sudden? People are starving in Africa, can't she think about that, stop _looking_ at him? He pats down his bangs in the mirror. “Just hanging out with Bobby, it’s not a big deal. We're gonna see a movie or something.”

“Alright,” she yawns, turning on the TV. “Have fun. Be safe.”

“I will.” Johnny waits another ten seconds until he’s sure her attention is firmly on the opening credits of _Xanadu._ He reaches onto the hallway bookshelf, and grabs her tip jar, full to the brim. Hundreds of dollars, close to four digits by now. “Bye. Love you.”

He’s out the door before she can finish saying _I love you too._ Before she can hear the coins clattering against the glass.

* * *

Not that he’d admit this to anyone, ever, but Daniel’s never been in a bar before, much less a club.

It just seemed like a waste of time to even try. With his face, he still gets mistaken for a middle schooler once a week. Back in Newark, he could get beer from his cousins, drink it somewhere he could actually hear himself think, and save the embarrassment of trying to get by an irritated bouncer who just got out of Rikers.

As usual, he’s finding Los Angeles is a completely different animal. 

The streets are swarming with taxis, music from radios mixing with the opening bands inside the clubs. He can practically smell the Aquanet in the air, as women with sky high hair and vibrant blue eye shadow swirl by on the sidewalk. It's like something out of a movie, bright and lively and a little dangerous, like anything can happen, and he gets the urge to get past the velvet ropes.

Ali hangs off his arm as they wait in line outside The Whisky a Go Go, in boots that make her at least two inches taller than him. He just wore white pants and one of his button-ups – he’s found the more he tries to dress up, the more he looks like a little kid who got into the costume box – but looking at the Cobras, at Johnny, he thinks he should’ve at least tried on something leather. 

Not that he's, y'know, _looking_ at Johnny.

“You don’t have a fake, so we’re gonna surround you and push in as a group,” Ali whispers, breath tickling his neck in a way that makes his stomach jump. The line moves forward, and her hands are on his back, wedging him in between Susan and Dutch. 

Dutch makes an irritated huffing noise, like a pawing bull, so Daniel steps forward nervously, nose bumping into Johnny’s back.

He turns, looking down at him over his shoulder, and stiffens like he's been slapped.

“What’s your problem?” Daniel spouts off, before he can stop himself.

“ID, please,” the bouncer says to Johnny. He sees a flash of crumpled twenties being pressed into the man’s hand, before he’s shoved forward again, into the darkness. He catches himself before he falls, planting a hand on Johnny’s hip. 

Amazing, what a guy can notice about someone's body when they're not fighting it for their life.

* * *

Johnny loves The Whisky, has since the fifth grade, before he ever laid eyes on it. Almost every awesome band played here when they were coming up. Mötley Crüe, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, The Who. Laura told him once that the place got raided all the time in the 60s, which he knew meant it _must_ be run by badasses. 

No. He’s not thinking about his mom tonight. Not thinking about the dozens upon dozens of bills folded into his wallet, jeans, the ankles of his shoes. 

The band’s guitarist is shredding onstage, the amped-up thrum of the strings shaking the floor. _O-o-h, I'll be laughing when you're crying, push me and you lose..._ He feels a warm hand slide across the dip on his back. LaRusso, stumbling when the group ran through the door. 

Even with a group of hot girls and a hefty tip, they knew to move fast before someone more discerning saw a cluster of people who couldn’t even vote yet and threw them out on their asses. That's all it was. Right?

_Stop feeling weird._

“Okay,” Bobby shouts over the music, nodding his head along with the beat. _O-o-h, I'll be dancing when you're dying..._ “Okay, you were right. This is awesome.”

Johnny grins, takes a wide step away from the squished-together group and squeezes his shoulder. “Happy birthday, man. You get a booth. I’ll get the drinks.”

He waves down a waitress, pulls $60 out of his pocket. "Hey. See that group? Get them started with Grey Goose. And anything else they want."

* * *

Daniel learns three things in the club.

One, he really, really likes shots. And vodka. And dirty martinis, good God, if he could take a bath in those, he would.

Two, none of the Cobras are so bad, really. In fact, he thinks they’re kind of funny, grabbing each other and shouting about something called _Iron Eagle._ Everything’s so funny, actually. Johnny dribbles some vodka against his shirt and he smacks the table, cackling. Ali puts a hand on his thigh and he bursts into giggles. She removes it, looking a little peeved, and that just makes him laugh more.

Three, the bathroom in this place doesn’t exist. He’s circled the room three times and just keeps hitting walls, and booths, and strangers making out in dark corners. Normally he’d be ticked off by now, or worried he’d piss himself in the worst possible pants on earth and never get another date again. Now, though, it’s just absurd. How does a club become a labyrinth?

There’s a drum solo banging off the stage, and Daniel thinks it might be playing in time with his heart, too fast, always too fast. _Leap before you look, that’s the LaRusso way._ A cute girl gyrates up against his side as he passes through the crowd in front of the stage, and okay, awesome. This is what California was supposed to be.

He stumbles towards the back of the club, sweat making his shirt stick to his back.

* * *

Johnny watches Bobby lick salt off his thumb, follow it with a shot, his face twisting as he fights the alcohol down his throat. 

"Goddamn."

"Lime, lime," he chides, lifting a slice up off the little cutting board the waitress provided them, touching it to Bobby's pink lips. 

In the dream Johnny doesn't tell anyone about, LaRusso lies on his chest in his bed, their legs tangled together. Still in those soft clothes. His skin is hot from sleep. Johnny gets to put a hand on his ass. 

Bobby sucks the lime, slams his hand against Johnny's knee, and whoops in victory. Then his smile drops, suddenly deadly serious.

"I love you," he says gravely to Johnny. "You're my best friend."

He thinks he could live with a dream like that, if it was Bobby.

But it's not.

"'m gonna get more beer!" He declares loudly, and stands up on the seat cushion, uses the heads of his friends to balance as he staggers out of the booth, drops onto the floor.

* * *

“Where’s a guy gotta go to take a leak around here?” Daniel asks Johnny. They both ended up at the bar, backs digging into the corner of the counter. They're both flushed, faces shiny.

Johnny stares at him, a little apprehensive, but mostly blank. Like he's a crazy person, blocking his way on the sidewalk to jabber on about aliens.

“Hey. Hey man.” He grabs at Johnny’s solid torso. “What’s your deal? Why you keep lookin’ at me like I’m gonna bite?”

Johnny sways forward, breath hot in his ear. “I know.”

* * *

“Know what?” LaRusso is laughing, again, who knew he was such a happy drunk? His shirt smells really nice, like the kind of detergent the housekeeper used to use on his clothes, back in the mansion.

This is all so stupid. What kind of mom spends money on fancy detergent when she and her kid live in such a crap heap? 

“About your fag magazines,” he says, a chuckle in his throat. “I saw them, in your room. Fucking LaRusso. Fucking...boy crazy.”

LaRusso’s hand is on the front of his jacket, in a tight ball around the fabric. “You’re drunk.”

“So are you!” Why are they grabbing clothes? He slides a hand into the back pocket of Daniel’s jeans.

This gets another laugh. Lower. Smug.

“Ohhh, look at that. They get you curious?” LaRusso shifts, ass moving under his fingers, and now their hips are touching, too. “Get Johnny Lawrence all hot and bothered?”

“Shut up,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t move. “Just saying. You kept my secret, I keep yours. You’re _welcome_.”

Daniel presses his lips together, a sneaky little smile, and looks out into the dancing masses. "Yeah, you're a real prince."

He's so _small._ Johnny could box him against the bar, press down, cover his whole body. He could _kiss_ him, and that smart ass couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

* * *

When Ali was little, her dad did his rotation in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai. 

Nestled in Beverly Hills, the number-one patient he saw rushed in was overdoses, alcohol poisoning. Private school kids and minor celebrities who overdid it on Xanax or vodka. She remembers asking if it scared him, reviving people so out of it they could turn into anything, hurt him. Hurt themselves.

“No, no,” he said. “Being that intoxicated? It doesn’t change you. It reveals you.”

She’s three shots and a margarita in when she gets up to track down Daniel, and she thinks he's been revealed; giggly, someone whose never had a real drink before. A little irritating, sure, that she's probably going to have to hold his jacket while he pukes in an alley later. But she's young. It's still mostly cute, the way he talks too loudly, loses himself in the club, while Guns 'N Roses play.

The mirrored shelves full of booze is backlit, with glowing purple light. In the silhouettes it casts, she sees the only two boys she's ever kissed crowded against the bar. Daniel's hands are curled up against Johnny's chest, Johnny's arms slung low around his hips.

Johnny looks determined, and terrified, mouth inches above Daniel’s face.

The way he did right before he kissed her for the first time.

Before she can add another, extremely earned alcoholic beverage to the night’s list, she hears a shriek.

“LAPD, stay where you are! Everybody stay where you are!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Whisky a Go Go was actually briefly closed between 1982 and 1985, and Guns N' Roses performed there in 1986. However, I’m allowed some anachronisms in the name of chaos and more importantly, rock🤘


	10. Chapter 10

The club was raided on account of a drug moving operation being run from the back offices. The LAPD had been working with the FBI for over a month before they stormed the Whisky and arrested over fifty people involved in the scheme.

Eight suburban, white, rich-ish high schoolers were not exactly their targets. 

They let Daniel go to the bathroom, at least. And then puke in it.

A juvenile officer comes into the holding cell they’re being kept in, away from everyone else, and tells them once they pay a $300 fine, they’ll be released to their parents. Despite the fact they smell like they’ve imbibed half the liquor in the state of California, no one was actually caught holding any of it. _Possession is nine-tenths of the law._ Turns out it’s not just a joke stoners make.

“Once your daddies get ahold of you, that’ll be punishment enough,” he laughs, and starts ushering them out to call their executioners, one-by-one. 

Susan breaks down in tears. Dutch glares, slouching down on the bench, baring his teeth. 

Daniel doesn’t even react. His head is starting to _pound;_ the harsh fluorescent lights of the police station and lack of water are making sobriety crash down on him _hard_. Squinting, and trying to ignore the chills running up and down his arms, he sees Johnny on the opposite side of the cell, legs spread, arms crossed. Face blank.

He thinks he’s gonna barf again.

He didn’t get an answer when he called Ma – big surprise – so he rings Mr. Miyagi and settles in for a long night. He’s not even sure if his sensei will be allowed to pick him up, but at least someone will know where to find his body if he gets shanked in the LA County lock up.

Bobby’s the only one who’s eighteen, but he’s also the only one with a lawyer for a mom – who also has a car phone – and is out like a bullet before anyone realizes he should be in bigger trouble.

“Must be nice to be rich, huh?” he cracks to Ali, but she doesn’t smile. “Jeez, I didn’t mean you. Are you cold?” He starts undoing the buttons on his shirt. “You want this?”

Ali shakes her head, puts a hand on top of both of his, stopping them in their tracks. 

“What gives? I didn’t puke on ya or something, did I?” He gives her a sparkly smirk; the big guns, he has a vague memory of flashing it all over the club. Is that what she’s mad about? He was just teasing, maybe got a little grabby.

“I don’t…” Ali drops her voice, so no one else in the cell can hear her. “I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for, right now.”

Got a little grabby with _Johnny_. Shit. 

“Whoa, hey, you got the wrong idea.” His face heats up.

“Mills?” The cop is back, swinging open the door. “Your father’s here.”

She stands up, and Daniel grabs her arm. “Hey, Ali–”

“I have to go.”

* * *

Laura arrives in a Chanel suit he hasn’t seen since their country club days, the one with the padded shoulders that make her look like a young, pretty Nancy Reagan. She smiles warmly at the police officers, almost flirting as they hand her Johnny’s personal effects in a plastic bag.

“Right this way, hon,” one of the cops says, even though he’s a couple years younger than her.

“Thanks so much,” she beams, ruefully, at him. _Kids, what are you gonna do?_ When her eyes land on Johnny, though, they’re blank. “Get in the car.”

It takes forty-five minutes to drive back to the apartment complex in weekend traffic. Laura turns on the radio, to a classical station he’s never heard before. He reaches out to switch it to Rock 106.7, and she abruptly turns it off. The sea of taillights on the other side of the freeway tint the whole world around him red. Hundreds of people heading into the city, just starting their nights at a quarter to one. He'd give anything to be in one of those cars, instead.

She doesn’t say a word until they’re back in their cramped living room, so he doesn’t either. He stands with his back against the front door, while she pours herself a glass of red wine. 

“Okay John,” she says. Quietly. Tired. No funny nickname. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

He finds himself bracing on the balls of his feet, the way he does right before he starts sparring. “It’s so stupid, we just went out for Bobby’s birthday, we weren’t even doing anything wrong.”

“Oh, I had no idea they lowered the drinking age to seventeen.”

Johnny pushes his hair out of his face with his fingers, the gel holding it in place long since sweated out. “C’mon, that’s a bullshit rule, you said so your–”

“How about stealing $841 from your mother?” He freezes, hand still on top of his head. She gives him a mirthless little chuckle. “Yeah, what you hadn’t already spent I had to use on the fine to spring you. Thanks for that.”

He swallows, trying to keep his voice level, nonchalant. “It’s just pocket change, though, right? I mean, you still have the money from selling the house–”

“Goddammit, Johnny!” Laura’s voice rises so suddenly the birds outside the apartment take flight in fear. “Why isn’t anything enough for you?”

“Mom–”

“I moved us into this _shithole_ instead of somewhere nicer inland so you didn’t have to change schools. I bust my ass serving Renee Astor and Sabine Carmichael and all those snotty women from the country club their dinners and pretend I can’t hear them whispering about me so you can keep going to karate. I don’t spend–” She throws her wine glass on the floor, shattering it. “–that _goddamn house money_ in case you get hurt, because we don't have health insurance anymore. A broken leg is seven thousand dollars in hospital bills. Did you even know that? Or do you just not care?”

Johnny feels his temperature rising. “I just wanted to go out with my friends."

She doesn't seem to hear him, a hand clapped to her forehead. "And now, you're making me be the bitch mom who has to _yell_ at you. I don't like being this person, baby!" 

"Then stop flipping out! I have _friends,_ this is how I keep them. Isn’t that what you wanted?” He remembers her watching from the window, all those summer days when he rode his bicycle around alone. Her nervous _tsking_ when he said he didn’t want a tenth birthday party and they both knew it was because no one would come. 

“Not like this! Not ones who make you act like a spoiled brat! I raised you better than that.”

He storms into the middle of the room, squaring off with Laura over the counter. “ _Did_ you?”

Her head rears back. “Excuse me?”

“You’re the one who married that jackass in the first place, just so you could have fancy clothes and a pool. You can't get pissed at me when you're exactly the same! And then you signed that fucking prenup– Jesus, Mom, how could you do something so stupid?”

Laura slams both hands down on the counter. Her eyes were on fire. “You come to me when you’re a single parent, and you can’t keep the lights on, and a man promises twenty years of comfort and safety for you and your child, and you tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.”

“Well, thanks to you, I guess I have the chance, because we’re trash again.”

“You know what? No more karate.” She brushes her hands together, as if washing them of the matter. “Spent January’s payments on your bail anyway.”

“Fuck you!” Johnny picks up the end table next to the couch, the closest piece of furniture, and throws it on its side. “I wish you weren’t my mom!”

“That makes two of us!”

Stillness. 

Both of Laura’s hands fly up to cover her mouth, blue eyes almost instantly wet. Johnny can’t bear to look at her. Nothing that comes next will fix anything. 

He storms out of the apartment, wondering dimly if he’s ever left it in any other way, when he slams into Daniel LaRusso, on the bottom step, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. There’s a shiny yellow car, idling in the street, behind him. It’s beautiful, heavy and old-fashioned. The kind Johnny sees in Fourth of July parades.

“Running away?” LaRusso asks, his voice just as drained as Laura’s was. Does Johnny _do_ this to people? His mere presence is like weedkiller, turning everything around him brown and lifeless. “Hey? Earth to Johnny?”

Johnny grabs two handfuls of Daniel’s checkered shirt and walks him backwards, until his back slams into the side of the car, metal warm.

“Jesus, what the hell?”

Johnny kisses him, too hard, sloppy like he hasn’t since sophomore year, when Ali gave him his first one. He didn’t use tongue then, either. When he pulls back, it’s like a _pop,_ suction being removed.

Daniel’s lips are red, and his entire face has gone slack, a little stupid. Johnny pushes him to the side and opens the car door.

“Just take me wherever.”

He tries to slide into the passenger's seat, only to bump into an old Asian man, already taking up the space. 

"Jesus!"

The man nods. "Not friends. Miyagi understand now."


	11. Chapter 11

Unless you count the quick cheek-peck he gave Jay Marino in kindergarten for sharing his Tonka truck, Daniel’s never kissed a boy before.

He’s thought about it, obviously. Some nights he thinks about it, like, a _lot_. But if you gave him a thousand guesses, he wouldn’t have pegged his first one happening in front of his karate teacher, with Johnny Lawrence’s hands curled up over his heart. 

Why is this happening? He just stopped by to grab some clothes, hunker down at Mr. Miyagi’s for the night, give Ma a chance to come home from work and simmer down before she attempts to murder him. Next thing he knew his mouth was going numb from the pressure on it, less romantic and more desperate. 

Through his headache, he remembers Johnny’s lips near his ear, hands in the back pockets of his jeans. _I know._ He saw Daniel’s skin mags and didn’t say a word, for _days_. Was this the culmination of a joke? An unusually well thought-out prank? 

But who was around to laugh at him? Why would Johnny make himself part of the scene, suck his face like he couldn’t taste the rancid combo of alcohol and puke? Like he wanted him?

Turning white as a ghost at the sight of Mr. Miyagi and bolting into the night wasn’t exactly a punchline worthy of _Carson._

“Johnny–” Daniel’s stunned he finds his voice, peeling himself off the side of his own car. “–Johnny, c’mon!” 

He continues running, a pale dot disappearing into the night. Shit, Daniel always forgets how deceptively fast the guy is. He did make it all the way from school to the complex in ten minutes flat on Halloween, with enough energy left over to kick his ass.

_What kind of person does that and then steals your first gay kiss a few months later? Is he hallucinating? Did he get drunk enough to fall into a coma?_

Somehow, he gets himself back into the driver’s seat, pulls jerkily away from the curb; Mr. Miyagi’s steady, inscrutable gaze remains trained on him as he drives after Johnny.

“I didn’t lie to you, okay? I liked – _like_ – Ali, and girls, too, you gotta know that,” he babbles. “Johnny– I didn’t know he was gonna do that, or that he was even like– I just– I dunno what the fuck I am, it’s not like I wanted to give the assholes around here another reason to put a target on my back, and look–you’re a traditional guy, and I don’t expect you to jump around about this or anything, but–”

“Men like you exist before even Miyagi born,” he says calmly, cutting through the chatter.

Daniel swallows. “Oh.” 

“All kinds of flowers bloom in same dirt. Make garden interesting.”

He swallows again, there seems to be a lump in his throat he can’t get past, even as the muscles in his shoulders unhitch. When he manages to speak, it comes out small and croaky. “Thanks.”

Mr. Miyagi reaches out, and for a second Daniel thinks he’s going to squeeze his arm. He's kind of worried he'll start crying at the kind touch.

But he just leans forward, points over the dashboard. “There.”

Johnny is hunched over on the bench in a bus shelter down the street, face buried in his hands. Daniel veers over the double yellow to pull up in front of him, ignoring the angry honks of the oncoming traffic that have to swerve around him.

“What the fuck, LaRusso?” He says, lifting his head to squint at him, disbelieving. His face has turned from too white to too red.

A Camaro lays on his horn, a man sticking his head out the window. “Wrong way, asshole! Go back to England!”

“Go back to blowing your dad!" Daniel flips off the car reflexively, before turning back to the shelter. "Come on, man. Just get in the backseat before someone runs us over.”

“I’m fine here.” 

“Do you even know how to ride a bus?” Daniel asks. “Tell me how much it costs to get to Bel-Air from here.”

Johnny grinds his jaw. “I thought you said you didn’t have a car.”

“Is new,” Mr. Miyagi says. “Shame to ruin so soon.”

His blue eyes run over the outline of the Ford like he’s checking out someone at the beach. A semi truck honks, headlights turning the inside of the windshield a blinding white-yellow. “...he's not going to tell anyone, right?"

Daniel clenches and unclenches his fingers around the steering wheel. Mr. Miyagi better be proud of how calm he's forcing his breath to be. "He doesn't even tell most people 'hello'."

He slides into the back seat, kicks his feet against the back of Daniel’s seat. “Fine. Drive.”

Daniel rolls his eyes, but turns back onto the right side of the street as sharply as he can, trying to ignore Mr. Miyagi’s pointed look boring into the side of his face. 

* * *

If LaRusso and his weird sensei were going to barricade themselves in the kitchen, making tea and gossiping, they can't get annoyed if Johnny snoops around the place.

The floors felt weird on his bare feet, like dojo mats, but softer, not sticky with sweat. There were sliding paper doors between each room, black-and-white pictures of other Japanese people all over the walls, words he couldn’t read painted on the bottom of the frames.

Johnny knew karate was Asian, obviously, but he’s never thought much about what that meant. Clearly LaRusso does. There was something thrumming through this place, like the energy of generations of fighters, passing knowledge through the air. It's kind of badass, like it's calming him and sharpening his senses at the same time.

_You know what? No more karate._

It feels like a dagger plunged into his heart, more than everything else Laura said combined. He squeezes his eyes shut, exhales sharply through his nose, like he'll huff and puff the memory away. Leaving only the feeling of LaRusso's pink, bow-shaped lips on his own. 

_Holy shit, why did I_ do _that?_

He hears tea cups clinking together as he pushes one of the doors back. This room has a twin bed boosted a few feet off the ground, sheets rumpled and strewn half on the floor, in a way that seems obscene. A familiar duffel bag is sagging in the corner, a white hachimaki hanging off one of the bed’s wooden beams.

“Not much to steal in here,” a voice pipes up behind him. LaRusso’s holding a tray with a fancy-ass teapot and three china cups on it. 

“Keep all the porn in your other bedroom?” Johnny says, because tonight is just full of doing idiotic things without a second thought.

Daniel considers him over the steam rising from the cups, before raising his eyebrows and nodding. “Yeah. I do.” 

Johnny always thought striking first meant you were guaranteed the upper hand. All the other person could do was play defense, try to fight you off until they got too tired and admitted defeat. But the way LaRusso is looking at him now; it’s like Johnny's laid bare at his feet, like he has him all figured out. 

“That was a shitty kiss,” LaRusso says. 

And his conclusion is that Johnny Lawrence is nothing to be scared of. 

Johnny crosses his arms, straightens his neck into a stiff column. “Watch it.”

“No wonder Ali broke up with you.” Daniel says. “She ditched me too, by the way, when she saw you groping my ass at the Whisky. So thanks for that."

Huh. Since the first second he saw the skinny twerp, all Johnny wanted was to get him away from Ali. Now that it's finally happened, the rush of victory doesn’t come. All he can focus on is the tightness in LaRusso’s expression. The hurt. 

“You seemed to like that.” He picks up one of the steaming cups, even though he has no intention of drinking it. Tea is disgusting plant water, and America was right for dumping it in Boston Harbor. 

“That was before I found out you kiss like you’re still practicing on your Bruce Lee poster.” 

Johnny wills himself not to freeze, because he did that _one time_ when he was, like, _twelve_ , and there’s no way LaRusso could know about that, he’s just taking wide swings, seeing what hits. 

He’s needling him on purpose. _Asking_ for it. _You blew up my life, Lawrence, prove you have use for that dynamite._

“At least I didn’t freeze up like a virgin,” he shoots back, voice low, leaning over the tray. “Scared you’ll come in your pants? I bet you did at the bar. Ali could tell, couldn’t she?”

He slides his hand up Daniel’s jaw, holds his head in place. This kiss is slow, deep. Pulling out all the stops. He nudges LaRusso’s tongue with his own, and the asshole makes a little noise in his throat, the preview to a moan. 

Daniel’s hand drifts to his thigh, seeming to forget he’s holding a tray, and it tips, one side swinging down and then everything’s a mess of shattered cups and scalding brown tea on the ground and their pants. 

“Son of a bitch!” Johnny springs back, shaking a few shards onto the ground. Daniel sinks to his knees, which causes a different kind of hot flare inside him. 

LaRusso’s sensei appears out of nowhere, silent and deadly the way he did on Halloween, standing in the doorway, seemingly nonplussed by his ruined dishware and the tea soaking his socks.

“He slipped,” Johnny hears himself blurt out to Mr. Miyagi.

“Jesus Johnny, get a towel,” Daniel says. Johnny feels his feet moving, stumbling back towards the kitchen. A few seconds later, LaRusso intones, “That guy, gimme a break.”

“You know it was snake when you pick it up,” he hears Mr. Miyagi say, as he and Daniel retrieve the pieces of the cups. “Careful to watch for fangs, Daniel-san.”

Advantage, Lawrence.

* * *

Daniel usually sleeps great when he stays over here. The quiet, the exhaustion of a day full of training, the faint smell of Mr. Miyagi’s garden outside; it all puts him out like a light.

It’s just. He can hear Johnny, on the other side of the wall. Breathing. Shifting around. Existing. 

Like an asshole. 

He can still feel his fingertips on the nape of his neck, the way everything seems to lift inside him with that precise, open mouth on him. King Karate trying to prove his moves were second to none. Making a pretty damn good case.

Daniel catches himself squirming under the sheets. He pulls a knee up to his chest until the stretch of his hamstring burns. Tries to breathe. He can’t jerk off in the dojo, that’s like, sacrilege.

A bird caws outside, in the blue darkness. Almost daybreak. They’ve been awake for so long. Maybe if he never goes to sleep, real life won't start up again. He can exist in this wonky plane of existence where break-ups and rivalries and his Ma wringing his would-be felon neck can't ever reach him. 

When he slides back his bedroom door, he sees Johnny, lying on the mat with a blanket thrown over his chest, his leather jacket bunched up as a pillow. Headphones on, eyes wide open. 

He plants his knees on the very edge of the mat, brushing against the side of Johnny’s t-shirt. Johnny's eyes flick up to him, betraying nothing, like this was arranged, and he’s been waiting. 

“What are you listening to?” Daniel asks. Even his whispers are loud in here. Johnny takes off the headphones and holds one side up to Daniel’s ear. Queen blares at him, almost blowing out his ear drum. _Keep yourself alive, take you all of your time and money, honey you’ll survive._ “Jeez, how is this relaxing to you?” 

Johnny looks at him like he’s stupid. “I make my own tapes. I always know what’s coming next.”

Daniel sets the entire Walkman aside, slings his leg over Johnny’s hip, straddling him. Inhaling seems a lot harder than it was a few seconds ago, especially when those big hands reflexively slide up under his t-shirt. Must be that famously thin California air. That's a thing, he totally learned about that in science. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Johnny cups the back of his neck again, pulls him down for a bruising kiss before answering. "You're a real moron, LaRusso. You know that?"

"Well," He lowers his weight slowly onto him, until they're chest-to-chest, his hair tickling Johnny's cheek. As confidently as he can, he slides a hand into Johnny's boxers, enjoying the hard bob of his Adam's apple as he wraps a hand around his half-hard cock. "We can't all be smart enough to run into traffic."

"Shut up," Johnny manages. His wrist crosses Daniel's as he dips his hand under his sweats, jerking each other off in clumsy, asynchronous rhythm. 

_This isn't real._ It's just the button to the weirdest day of his life, the one he'll laugh about when he's grown up and successful and doesn't even remember the feeling of being hard against Johnny's bare leg. _A night outside of the timeline of Daniel LaRusso's life._

"Make me." 

He laughs, strangled and surprised, when Johnny squeezes him in between his thighs and rolls them over, pinning him on his back.

_And all the freedom that entails._


End file.
